Meet Myrtle Beach's Smallest Celebrities: The Squirrels Racking Up 100m+ Views

The Beryl the Squirrel Instagram page has multiple viral videos, with some reaching tens of millions of views. (Courtesy: Connor Ingalls/WPDE)

The Feslers are now quite familiar with Instagram. Their Beryl the Squirrel account, named after one of the first squirrels to appear in their videos, has more than 100 thousand followers, with hundreds of millions of views.

“We started getting a few followers and we said ‘Wow, maybe we’ll get a hundred followers,’” Fesler said. “It just kind of grew from there.”

The cast of starring squirrels is always revolving. The current crew includes a mainstay mom, named Flash.

“She zig-zags around all over the place,” Fesler said. “She literally controls that tree and that deck. She chases other ones away and says ‘This is my deck, this is mine.’”

A squirrel peaks out of their custom-built tree house in John and Jo Fesler’s Myrtle Beach backyard. (Courtesy: Joshua Davis/WPDE)

Being a celebrity comes with a few perks for Flash…including her own custom squirrel house, one of seven in the Fesler’s yard. All come hooked up with Ring video cameras to capture the action for Instagram.

The squirrels themselves are as unique as their various houses.

“They actually have their own little personalities,” Fesler said.

John and Jo recently started rehabbing baby squirrels in need, using a modified cat house…recently raising five to health, who’ve decided to stick around.

“We have Sago, Coco, and Palmer,” Fesler said. “Then the two other ones that came from another tree that were rescues, they’re about a week younger than those, and those are named Bella and Ukey.”

John and Jo Fesler observing a squirrel atop a custom-made squirrel house in their Myrtle Beach backyard. (Courtesy: Connor Ingalls/WPDE)

Why would the squirrels decide to stick around the Fesler’s backyard when they’ve now got the whole world to explore? You can say they’ve got a bond, born from a labor of love.

“It’s about a three month or so process,” Fesler said of rehabbing the squirrels. “Cause when we got ’em, they were tiny babies. About as big as your thumb, very small, and you have to hand feed them 2 a.m., 5 a.m., every couple hours when they’re that small. It’s pretty involved when they’re tiny babies.”

If you can believe it, their commitment to these animals is now helping squirrels across the globe!

“We got contacted from somebody from South Africa that ran a rehab in South Africa,” Fesler said. “They said we just love your videos and we use them to train our new rehab people so they can understand the behind the scenes of how squirrels and other animals live.”

A life in retirement spent as a Squirrel Whisperer.

You might call it nuts…

Fesler’s got another word for it.

“It’s just a lot of fun,” he said. “It really is.”